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We spent the last 12 months targeting a particular search term (mortgage broker) and have been ranking well for it consistently for about 6 months now. We have decided to change the target search term to something else (insurance broker) but noticed that our traffic has started to decline since we started doing this.

We are still ranking well for the initial search term, and our ranking is slowly improving for the new targeted search term in SERPs but traffic is down about 60% from January. Is it normal/expected for this to happen?

The decline started in December 2018. A seasonal drop in December is expected, but it never bounced back after that like it did in previous years.  The first quarter of 2019, organic traffic has consistently been down 10-15% compared to last year. April was down 33% and this month we are down 20%.

The business does mortgage broking and insurance broking. We focused on getting "mortgage broker" to rank first, as that is what we were predominantly known for, but now we want to get our name out there for our insurance services too.

Our ranking for "insurance broker" hasn't gone up enough to make up for the drop in traffic. In your experience, do you expect the drop in traffic to last, or will it slowly recover?